![]() Our family went from a family of five to the closest knit family of four you’ve ever seen. To my friends who had lost parents before me and knew exactly what to do, whether it was to let me word vomit every awful memory I had from her dying or completely ignore the fact that my world had been flipped upside down and take me out for a beer and watch football. ![]() From Nick who ran our household for eight months as a virtual single dad, and let me ugly cry on him daily while I never even once considered his loss and sadness over losing my mom. Thankfully, my after has been surrounded with the most amazing people. You see the world differently, and there may not be Thestrals, but there’s a definitive shift in your world and life. Death changes you, being a part of someone’s dying process changes you. Once you’ve been inducted into this horrible, awful club…there’s a sort of brotherhood/sisterhood between you and others who have walked the same desolate path. The only people who can see them are those who have been touched by death, and if JK Rowling didn’t nail it on the head with that analogy. ![]() In the Harry Potter movies (which ironically my mom hated), only certain people can see these creatures called Thestrals, winged horses who are terrifying to look at but extremely gentle. Mothers are powerful forces of nature, and I witnessed just how strong a mother’s love is on my knees by her side, and less than 24 hours she would be gone. Death was so very near, she was barely conscious but hearing her daughter cry summoned her enough to push back that veil for a brief moment and console me. That was the last bit of mothering I’ll ever have, and it was such a powerful moment to me. My head flew up and I grabbed her hand and she looked right at me and brought my hand to her lips and kissed it. She hadn’t touched or looked at me in days. As I was pouring out my grief with my face buried in the mattress by her side, I felt her hand lift and rest on my head and my breath caught. My mom was gone, her heart was still beating and lungs still working, but what was left of her wasn’t here. We had been trying to not cry around her for the past week but I couldn’t help it. She stopped talking, making eye contact, responding to touch or our voices, but she stayed.Īt the worst part of it, the night before she left us when she was so restless and upset, and I was sleep deprived and incredibly mad at God and cancer, and fell to my knees at her bedside and ugly cried. “they’re full, mom! the birds have food, they’re taken care of”īut still, she wasn’t ready or able to leave us, and it was pure hell watching her struggle to stay here with us, while her body was failing her. We would ask her over and over, “What do you need help with, mom? We’ll do it!” and the night before she died she finally answered, 61 and just a few months earlier biked around Dublin on our trip to Ireland.Įvery day she faded from us more, while at the same time trying to get up and “go” somewhere, and telling us she needed help. But this wasn’t the beginning of a new life, it was the ending of life of a woman in her prime. We took shifts, we were melting down medicine and measuring out syringes to push in her feeding tube, we snuggled up next to her while she slept. It was much more like caring for a new baby. In movies they speak weakly from bed some poignant words and then close their eyes and simply stop breathing.Įverything about my mom’s last ten days on earth was the complete opposite of what Hollywood paints death to be like. Susan Sarandon calling in her kids one at a time on Christmas in Stepmom. Forrest Gump’s mama sitting up in bed propped by pillows saying she’s sick. Most of us haven’t helped ease someone from one life to the next, so we base the dying process on what we see in movies. When someone you love is dying, there’s even less advice given. You know how after you have a baby that you say, “No one told me half of the stuff that was going to happen.” The movies don’t show puking during labor, blood clots afterwards, no one tells you that after your third baby the postpartum cramping can be worse than the labor contractions themselves. Decemwas the last day I spent with my mom.
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